Brief Biography
He graduated from Universiti Malaya with a Bachelor's Degree in Chemical Engineering. Before graduation, he completed his internship in Top Glove Corporation Berhad in 2016 as a Research and Development Industrial Trainee. He started his career in ExxonMobil Research and Engineering as a Process Monitoring and Analysis Engineer in 2017, contributed to various engineering studies, which resulted in margin improvement from increased yields and energy efficiency. Currently, he is working as an Alkylation Process Engineer, leading engineering benchmarking studies to identify margin improvement opportunities across units via improvement on advanced control applications.
Personal experience when stepping into a career
ExxonMobil provides many pieces of training for fresh graduates to adapt to the company. Although the pressure of working is still high despite the training given, as the company is filled with people with extraordinary capabilities, the competitiveness will prompt one to work harder and become a better self.
For a country to grow, we need a strong industry;
For an investor to be attracted, we need solid graduates;
For sustainable national growth, we need well-developed industries.
The graduate engineer must know about the optimization of the industry for the industry to be at its peak.
Tip 1: You can expect a starting salary of RM3000 - RM4000 on average as a fresh graduate.
Brief Biography
My name is Beng Leong. I studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Malaya. After graduation, I briefly worked as a sales engineer, specializing in the plastics industry. Then, I moved to Nestlé and worked as an industrial engineer for around 2.5 years before moving to the engineering department in the breakfast cereals plant as a plant engineer for more than 3 years. In this role, I manage a team of engineers and technicians to execute timely preventive maintenance, and implement improvement projects under CAPEX.
Mr. Toh Beng Leong
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Are there any training or workshops available to assist the transition from the fresh graduate to work-life?
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Is there any potential job or position available for the chemical engineer in your company?
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In your opinion, would the engineers be replaced by AI in the manufacturing and processing industry?
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This is your Project description. Provide a brief summary that will help visitors understand your work.
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Possibility for the engineers to be replaced in the future
Despite the rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence in the industry, the role of engineering in monitoring these systems is still irreplaceable.
Moreover, the demand for resources will escalate following the world population growth, more industries will have to be developed for catering to the increasing demands, this is where engineers will be needed, and thus the role of an engineer will remain significant in the industries.
Personal Advice for the undergraduates and the youngsters
As a university student, it is important to be well-balanced between study life and co-curricular life for one to be well equipped with social skills and knowledge.
The need for pursuing further education (Master’s degree or Ph.D.) depends on one's perspective. One might find that a bachelor’s degree is insufficient for a better career, and one might find that working experiences are more crucial in developing career skills.
Tip 2: The knowledge learned during a bachelor’s degree will serve as the crucial fundamentals during a career. It would be significant to have strong fundamentals before stepping into a career.
Summarised Outcome
Are there any training or workshops available to assist the transition from the fresh graduate to work-life?
There are plenty of workshops available, depending on your long-term career goals. For the corporate environment or big companies, employers often prefer specialists over generalists, as they heavily rely on the employees to perform their own roles efficiently and effectively. Thus, it is more practical to be equipped with related specialized skills through physically or virtually conducted workshops and training. Meanwhile, for smaller companies, the preference is for generalist rather than specialist, as they rely on employees with different skills and talents, to perform various tasks together. All in all, it depends on the industry and company in which you engage. Nowadays, the trend is moving towards programming, which prompted many engineers to pick up programming or computation courses, such as C++ and Python.
Is there any potential job or position available for the chemical engineer in your company?
Do not be surprised, food and beverage companies hire lots of chemical engineers, normally in the production team, to manage the productions, group of operators, improvement projects, and executing improvement activities. This is because chemical engineers often can understand processes easily, which is part and parcel of a production engineer - understanding the process flow, troubleshooting problems, managing production, and ensuring accurate output.
Besides, chemical engineers can also pick up the quality assurance role, although most of the chemical engineering knowledge is not so relevant with this role but the knowledge in process and compliance with ISO standards is crucial to perform well in this role.
Next is the R&D role, but most companies prioritize hiring experienced engineers for this. One with the required talents and skills may have the chance to be considered as well.
Last but not least, the engineering role, which is a mix of chemical, mechanical and electrical engineering knowledge, is up for the ones who are willing to take up the challenge.
In your opinion, would the engineers be replaced by AI in the manufacturing and processing industry?
In my opinion, engineers are irreplaceable in the next 10 to 20 years. The trend of automation or Industry Revolution 4.0, which has established a foothold in more advanced countries will surely emerge soon in Malaysia. Big companies are putting lots of efforts and taking big steps to make it happen. The main impact will be on the operators, instead of the engineers, as engineers are still significant in ensuring the proper functioning of automation machines and implementing changes if issues occur. Hence, engineers do not need to worry about getting replaced in the next 10 to 20 years.
Is further study important to undergraduate engineering students for their future careers?
Industries and companies in Malaysia often prioritize working experiences, rather than a postgraduate degree. It is advisable to pursue further education if there is a preference to specialize in certain subjects, for instance, safety or environment. One without these preferences should start working after completing the bachelor’s degree. As for one who prefers to focus on research or become a lecturer, further study is the only way to go further in this career path. Thus, it depends on the aspiration of the fresh graduate to consider whether to pursue postgraduate degree or not.
